Japan Map

Japan map of main destinations

Map by Google, additions by Bugbog.

Japan map: why holiday there?

Japan is a country full of contradictions, especially the mix of ultra-new technology and modern lifestyles with ancient customs. Japan’s sights are mainly magnificent temples, shrines, gardens and castles of one sort or another, with a few very modern buildings .

Japanese cuisine is superb and not necessarily pricey, hotels are reasonably cheap and domestic transport is unbelievably efficient.

But many tourists find the pace of life, quirky concepts and extraordinary cleanliness of the country and the dedication to product and service perfection of the Japanese to be equally interesting, along with safety, natural safety, not imposed by draconian police measures. A visiting American artist/writer told me recently that he spent a couple of weeks touring the country and was amazed not to see any police. Tokyo is frequently selected as the world’s safest city according to experts, with Singapore at number 2 and Osaka (also Japan) at number 3.

Asakusa Sanja festival, Senso-ji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan

Japan map: downsides

Japan is often crowded and overwhelming, there are dreary, endless suburbs of plasticoat walls and skies strung with a tangled spaghetti of overhead power cables, while concrete is winning the war over wood. Also Japanese is not an easy language to use, even simple requests. Still, local people are always polite and will help if they can understand and important signs are usually duplicated into English characters too.